The Card Game

We recommend playing GBO Hawaii as a card game first! This will help you get the basics before you play the full board game. GBO Hawai’i is easily adapted to a card game, which is quicker, easier to learn, more portable, and *almost* as much fun. 🙂

Kids

Any number of things can help make GBO Hawai’i more accessible for the young green entrepreneurs in our lives. The main part of GBO Hawai’i that makes it more of a young adult game is the policies and events. So you can play an entire game without the Policies & Events deck. Simply go around the board investing in businesses and pay no heed to the four black spaces on the board–just treat them as any other space.

You may also consider any of the following to make the game easier for your kids:

eliminate the permits, and just allow them to invest in any business that needs a permit without actually getting that permit.

eliminate the concept of dividends, and just have the kids start with $1,000,000 instead of the usual $500,000. This should enable them to invest in as many businesses as they’d like without running out of money. At the end of the game, instead of adding up how much each player has, just summarize how many jobs and eco-credits they’ve earned. This way, all the counting is done with symbols, not numbers. You’d also be eliminating the bad guys, the oil industry lobbyists, in this way.

Flip through the Chance Card deck and remove any cards that are too complicated for the kids. Many are very simple, but some require putting two or three concepts together.

Disclaimer: GBO Hawai’i is not recommended for children under the age of 13. It has some small parts that can be choking hazards, so make sure if you’re playing with your kids that you warn them away from putting any parts of the game in their mouths, and certainly keep a hawk’s eye on them!

Group play & tournaments

Want a fun activity for a group of fun people? Try a GBO Hawaii tournament! Each player plays the game once, and their scores are entered into an overall scoreboard, allowing comparisons across games. We’ve done these for non-profits (as a fundraiser), for group activities, for classrooms, and for sustainability themed events (Green Drinks).

Drinking Game

Hmmm….I’ll leave that up to you…our lawyers wouldn’t want us endorsing this, but of course, we do get this question a lot, so we just thought we’d acknowledge it on our website for anyone interested. Who is 21 or above. And drinks responsibly.